1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scenario editing apparatus, and more particularly to a scenario editing apparatus for editing a scenario of a multimedia application.
2. Description of Related Art
When a scenario of multimedia is edited, it is necessary to specify the presentation (display) position of image data, text data or the like on a display screen. For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. Hei-3-41573 (titled as xe2x80x9cDATA EDITING; METHOD AND APPARATUS THEREOFxe2x80x9d) discloses such a conventional scenario editing apparatus in which the scenario editing as described above is performed. This conventional scenario editing apparatus will be described with reference to FIG. 16.
As shown in FIG. 16, the scenario editing apparatus comprises a multimedia managing unit 111 for managing the attributes of media data, an interactive menu managing unit 112 for managing the attributes of each interactive menu, an editing data storage unit 116 for temporarily storing the attributes of the media data and the attributes of the interactive menu for editing, a stereographic generating unit 113 for generating graphic data to be displayed on the basis of an attribute of the multimedia under editing and an attribute of the interactive menu under editing, a coordinate converting unit 114 for converting the graphic data to the coordinates of a drawn image (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cimage-drawing coordinatesxe2x80x9d) on a display screen, a stereographic display unit 115 for performing a graphic display on the basis of the image-drawing coordinates on the display screen, an input managing unit 117 for receiving an editing command and an input from an user on a stereographic operation, and a display renewing control unit 110 for reading out the attribute data from the media data managing unit 111 and the interactive menu managing unit 112, recording the data in the editing data storage unit 116 and transmitting a command or data to the stereographic generating unit 113, the coordinate converting unit 114 and the stereographic display unit 115 to renew the attribute data in the editing data storage unit 116 according to an input from the input managing unit 117.
In the data editing apparatus thus constructed, the user can freely enlarge/reduce/move graphics displayed on the stereographic display unit 115 by manipulating the input managing unit 117 comprising a mouse, a keyboard, etc. to determine the presentation position of the multimedia data and renew the attribute of the presentation position of the multimedia data, which is stored in the media data managing unit 111, thereby performing the scenario editing.
In order to facilitate a scenario editing work, it is effective to indicate the presentation position while referring to a schematic diagram drawn on a sheet or the positions of figures drawn on a photographed picture when the presentation position of the multimedia data is indicated. However, the conventional scenario editing apparatus as described above has the following problems. That is, there is no means of inputting electronic data of the schematic diagram or electronic data of the photographed picture, and also there is no means of analyzing the input data to obtain the candidates of position coordinates to be referred to. Furthermore, the scenario editing work is more complicated when the presentation position of multimedia data is indicated while referring to a schematic diagram as shown in FIG. 2 or positions of figures drawn on a photographed picture as shown in FIG. 3.
An object of the present invention is to provide a scenario editing apparatus in which a position editing of multimedia data can be facilitated by determining the presentation position of multimedia data on the basis of a schematic diagram or position information drawn on a photographed picture when scenario editing is performed for the multimedia.
In order to attain the above object, according to a first aspect of the present invention, a scenario editing apparatus for performing editing of multimedia includes input managing means for managing an user""s input and selecting a specific multimedia data to indicate the presentation position of the selected multimedia data, electronic image input means for inputting an electronic image, position coordinate analyzing means for analyzing the electronic image from the electronic image input means and extracting figure feature points of the electronic image to obtain position coordinates of the figure feature points, presentation position storing means for storing the position coordinates of the figure feature points of the electronic image as the presentation position coordinates of the multimedia data selected by the input managing means, and screen output means for displaying on the display screen the figure feature points of the electronic image and the multimedia data for which the presentation position is edited, thereby achieving an interactive editing.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a scenario editing apparatus includes input managing means for managing input information obtained by an user""s operation of an input device to select multimedia data containing image data or text data and select position coordinates when a scenario editing is performed, electronic image input means which is connected to an image electronizing equipment such as a video camera, an electronic still camera or an image scanner, and receives an electronic image which is an origin to determine the presentation position of the multimedia data, position coordinate analyzing means for analyzing the electronic image input to the electronic image input means to determine the position coordinates of figure feature points containing corners or ends of lines of a figure which will be used as candidates of the presentation position of the multimedia data, position coordinate selecting means for determining, from the information of the input managing means, a presentation position which is one of the presentation position candidates of the multimedia data obtained by the position coordinate analyzing means and is selected as the presentation position of the multimedia data by an user, media data storage means for storing multimedia information containing both of data ID for identifying the multimedia data and the name of a file in which the multimedia data are stored, data selecting means for determining, from the information of the input managing means, which multimedia data an user has selected from the multimedia data information stored in the media data storage means as multimedia data for which the user desires a presentation position editing, presentation position storage means for storing the value of the position coordinate selected by the position coordinate selecting means and the data ID of the multimedia data selected by the data selecting means, scenario storage means for storing scenario information containing the data ID of the multimedia data and information on the presentation position, and storing the data ID and the value of the position coordinate to be stored in the presentation position storage means while adding or overwriting the data ID and the value of the position coordinate to scenario information which has been already stored, and screen output means for displaying the candidate of the position coordinate obtained by the position coordinate analyzing means on the display screen in order for the user to select the presentation position of the multimedia data, displaying the information of the multimedia data stored in the media data storage means on the display screen in order for the user to select the multimedia data for which the user performs the presentation position editing, displaying the information stored in the presentation position storage means on the display screen in order for the user to check the multimedia data for which the editing is completed, and the presentation position thereof, and displaying user""s input information according to the input information of the input managing means on the display screen, whereby an interactive editing work is achieved.